


dissolve into the sea until there's nothing left

by lilmisswannadi3



Category: Love Live! Sunshine!!
Genre: Angst, Anorexia, Eating Disorders, F/F, One-Sided Matsuura Kanan/Ohara Mari, Will add tags as I go
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-05
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-03-16 15:01:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29209287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilmisswannadi3/pseuds/lilmisswannadi3
Summary: As a child, Kanan was chubby in the cutest sense of the word.  That doesn't stop getting called that from hurting.Note: just to be clear, honestly, I have no clue what I'm doing with this anymore, so updates would be a rare chance event
Relationships: Matsuura Kanan/Ohara Mari
Kudos: 12





	1. Something More Drastic

As a child, people would call Kanan chubby and cute. They never meant for it to be taken as an insult, only as a compliment to how naturally adorable she was and yet those words pierce her heart every time she hears them. 

Soon she'd taken to running, convincing her parents that it was because she needed the extra training to do well in the track team. It was a blatant lie, she never joined the track team in the first place but they seemed to believe her and so began her obsessive habit with morning jogs.

A few years passed and Kanan found herself in high-school. As her body filled out in all the typical places a girl's body often does, she detested her body more and more, pinching bits of flesh that wasn't there before and finding herself staring at her unsightly curves in the mirror at every opportunity.

Something more drastic has to be done.

At first, it was just counting calories, nothing unusual in the lives of teenage girls. 1,800 is a good amount for a girl her height and age, right? But the numbers on the scale just didn't drop fast enough, her reflection is disgusting as always, this isn't working. And so her limit drops to 1,500 then 1,000 then 800 then 500 and soon she gives up counting calories at all, instead settling for the just stop eating altogether approach. Eventually, hunger simply becomes a part of her daily routine and she finds a twisted sense of comfort in the way her stomach growls and the pain she feels when she downs bottles and bottles of water instead of eating. She tells herself that she eats enough to survive and be able to keep up with the rest of Aqours, tells herself that it's fine because she takes her vitamins, tells herself that as long as she's not dying she can keep going. But of course, there comes a point where eating enough to survive doesn't get you through the day, taking vitamins doesn't make up for months and months of malnutrition and you do start dying despite it all feeling fine.

It's a hot summer afternoon when everyone was practicing on the roof, one second she was fine, dancing and singing and laughing along with the rest of the group and the next her heart was pounding so loud she could hear every beat, the world around her started to swirl in a disorienting way and she panicked. She panicked and yet her voice came out just above a whisper. 

"Mari?"

Before the blonde could even respond, she'd collapsed, Mari coming in just in time to catch her before she hit the ground. Dia dismissed practice for the day and one by one the girl packed up their belongings and asked Dia and Mari to let them know if anything happens, Mari promised to keep them posted and the first and second years make their way home. Mari and Dia sit on the rooftop for what feels like an eternity but was probably actually more akin to 40 minutes with Kanan laying on Mari's lap, the conscious girls having a concerned conversation when Kanan began to stir.

"Good morning, Kanan," Mari chimed, her voice lowered to a gentle tone in contrast with her usual cheery one, "are you feeling better now?"  
"Given us quite a fright there, you know you can tell us if you're not feeling well." Dia passes her a fresh water bottle, the cap half-open so that the bluenette would have an easier time opening it, she gratefully takes it and takes a sip.  
"Yeah, I know," she twists the cap back on, "it just kind of hit me out of nowhere." Mari and Dia share a look before turning their attention back onto Kanan.  
"Actually, we have something we have to talk to you about," Mari starts, concern obvious in her eyes.  
"We're worried about you, I know you think you hide it well but we know you haven't been eating lately, we can tell that you start talking a lot more during lunchtimes and that by the time the bell rings barely anything in your bento box would be touched."   
Kanan can't look her in the eyes. "I-" she tries to defend her eating habits, but Mari quickly interrupts.  
"We just want you to tell us honestly what's going on, we can't bear to see you kill yourself slowly like this. You're so thin now, do you see that?" Mari whispers, reaching out to hold her wrist in her hand, her eyes turn sad looking at the space between Kanan's wrist and the circle she'd formed with her fingers, unbeknownst to her, Kanan is ecstatic looking at that same space. Kanan looks away.  
“Nothing’s going on, the heat just got to me because I haven’t gotten enough water today.” she starts packing her things away in her bag and making her way towards the stairs, “I think I’ll head home for today, have to watch the shop. You guys should go home too, the sun’s gonna go down soon.”


	2. Sunrise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The morning jog is an unbreakable commitment, but at least the sunrise waited for her today.

Kanan sits at the dinner table with her mother, father and grandfather, mindlessly picking at the food that’s on her plate, the events earlier replaying in her head. Just what had gone wrong? She was sure that she ate enough that she shouldn’t have passed out and it definitely wasn’t dehydration like she said, recalling the multiple bottles of water she’d drank throughout the day. Maybe it really was the heat, or maybe practice was more intense than usual, either way, whatever happened today can’t happen again or she’ll never get Mari and Dia off her trail.

“Kanan, what are you doing picking at your food like that?” her mother asked, stern in the way a mother often is  
“Ah, sorry. Just trying to remember which chapter my teacher said I had to read up to today.” Not entirely a lie, her teacher did actually assign reading during Japanese today and she had actually forgotten where to read up to but her forgetting things was just common occurrence nowadays, she blames malnutrition. She stabs a few pieces of potato with her fork and sticks it in her mouth, chews exactly 15 times, swallows and repeats until the plate is clean, three steps so well practiced it’s basically second nature.

Didn’t even put up a fight? Pathetic.

Putting up a fight here does her no good. She places her dishes in the sink and goes to the bathroom. Locking the door, she lets the hot water in the shower run and sticks her middle and pointer finger down her throat, leaving it there until she gags and her eyes water. It’s not like she ever gets anything back up, she just wasn’t a puker (she wishes that she was), but this is punishment; punishment for finishing her plate, punishment for not being subtle enough to not get caught, punishment for everything she’s ever done wrong. She removes her fingers from her mouths and leans against the wall of the shower, letting the hot water wash it all away and down the drain. 

Changing into her pyjamas, she lets her eyes wander around her naked frame in the mirror. Had she really gotten thinner? Kanan can’t see it at all, as far as she’s concerned there’s still unneeded flesh hanging off her thighs and if she pinched around her waist there’s still something there she can hold between her fingers. It's still just not good enough. Pulling her shirt back down she heads to bed for the night, knowing that tomorrow she’ll have to stay extra vigilant around Mari and Dia. They mean well, she knows that for a fact having spent what is essentially her entire childhood around the two, but even then this is something that she has to keep to herself no matter what, she can’t risk them trying to stop her before she’s perfect. Kanan ends up spending the rest of the night scrolling through her phone until the sun peeks out from over the horizon and bathes everything in an orange glow, signalling to Kanan that it’s time to get out of bed and go on her morning jog. 

Her morning jog isn’t enjoyable, not that it ever has been, but every run she goes on makes the process more unbearable, the way her legs burn, how she struggles more to make it up the stairs instead of the other way around, how much of a chore it is, a commitment she made to the voices in her head that she can’t break without punishment. She sits down at the top of the hill she’d just run up and looks over the sea, sparkling and warm with the light of the sunrise; if she got nothing else out of her runs at least she gets to see this. It almost reminds her of her childhood friend with orange hair and determination that burns brighter than the sun itself. It must be nice being Chika or Ruby or even Yoshiko, naturally small and petite while Mari and Dia and Riko had grown elegantly into their curves, it almost seems like she’s the only one who’d grown up with her body wrong in every sense of the word. She makes her way home before those thoughts drown her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry Kanan I love you bby


	3. Rooftop

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's something up, Mari and Dia have noticed for a whole lot longer than Kanan would like to believe.

“Kanan-chan!” Chika’s voice echoes down the halls of Uranohoshi Girl’s High and Kanan puts on a smile, fake but looking entirely natural, modelling Aqours costumes every few weeks teaches you how to do that.  
“Hey, Chika, you need something?”  
“No, just checking up on you, after what happened yesterday, you know?” 

_Yesterday, of course this is about yesterday._

“I’m fine, I’m fine, it was just hot yesterday and I didn’t get enough water.” Kanan gives a light chuckle, anything to play it off as nothing serious, right?  
“That’s good! Well then, I have to head to class, see you at practice!” Chika says as she takes a few steps towards her classroom, “And don’t forget to drink water!”

Kanan smiles at how genuine and bubbly the mikan-haired girl is, just the same as when they were just little kids, and hopes that she never grows out of her positivity before turning back to the door in front of her. Behind this door, Dia and Mari were waiting for her to walk in. Dia’s always been earlier than she was when it comes to arriving at school, and ever since Mari became chairwoman she’s basically lived in this place. The thought of opening the door to her friends made her mind go into overdrive thinking about excuses and reasons and lies. Lies. Oh so many of them. She slides open the door.  
They weren’t here. Kanan’s eyes widened just a bit from surprise, but she recovered quickly enough, taking her seat near the back of the classroom and hanging her bag from the hook. She stares out the window, wondering about what could possibly make the two of them be late to school by their standards. 

On the rooftop, Mari and Dia were wondering about Kanan.

“There’s obviously something going on. In fact, it has been going on even since middle school but she’s getting worse.”  
“Exactly! We at least used to be able to talk her into eating and if we offered food she’d always take a bit, but it’s like she just completely refuses food now.” Mari says, tucking a strand of stray hair and tucking it behind her ears, “How long has she been like this?”  
Dia looks down at the floor and pauses before replying, “Since you left.”  
“So she’s been like this, destroying herself from the inside out, for two whole years?”  
“That’s what it seems like, though I must clarify that I don’t know how bad it is when she’s at home, so she might’ve been better during that break she took but from how she looks, I’d say that it’s unlikely that that was the case.”  
As Dia finished her sentence, tears started to well in Mari’s eyes, threatening to spill over and roll down her cheeks, “I shouldn’t have left after all, I should’ve been there for her.”  
“This wasn’t your fault,” Dia comforted, pulling the blonde into a hug as the tears starts to fall, “we were the ones who pushed you to go and pursue that opportunity, and she’s sick, there’s nothing we can do to cure her except make sure she eats, even a little bit, and encouraging her to go see someone. Okay?” Feeling the taller girl nod in her embrace, Dia pulls her in a little tighter. They stay in that embrace until Mari calms down back into her usual self and the pair makes their way to their classroom just before the teacher walks into the room, textbooks in hand.

Kanan doesn’t miss the way Mari’s eyes are just ever so slightly red and puffy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the short chapter, I can't write long to save my life. Honestly, like someone could point a gun to my head and say "1000 words or I shoot" and I'll just die


	4. Infirmary

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> even if you tell yourself not to let something happen again, sometimes your body has different plans.

Despite telling herself that she can’t let it happen again, her body seemed to have different ideas. It was during class (was it maths or science?) when her vision started to blur and her heart started skipping beats again, telling the teacher that she didn’t feel well, she made her way to the nurse’s office, or at least she tried to. She makes it a good four steps out of the classroom door before her legs give out under her and she lands on the laminate floors of the hallway with an audible thud. Mari and Dia must’ve been paying extra attention to her the moment she raised her hand to excuse herself because they were out of their seats and next to her in what Kanan could swear was less than three seconds.

“Kanan!”

Which one of them shouted her name? Or maybe it was both, she can’t really tell over how far away they sounded. Someone was picking her up and she can’t tell who it was now either, knowing that both of the other third years were surprisingly strong for their frame, so she just closes her eyes and rests her head against the girl whose arms she was in. Mari’s expensive perfume. Somehow knowing that Mari was holding her makes her relax and she burrows further into the blonde, pretending to herself that her heart doesn’t feel like it was going to jump out of her chest in the worst way possible at any moment.  
The next time she was awake she was in one of the beds in the infirmary. Outside, the sky glowed a brilliant orange and Mari was asleep in a chair next to her, her head resting on the edge of her bed. Kanan lets out a sigh. They’re definitely not going to leave her alone now. Seemingly sensing that Kanan has woken up, Mari stirs as well, sitting up in her seat and rubbing her eyes. 

“Did Dia go home?” Kanan figures that she may as well be the one who starts the conversation  
“Yeah, she went home with Ruby-chan,” Mari says, giving a tired yawn “Hanamaru-chan had somewhere to go and couldn’t go with her.”  
“I see,” this conversation really wasn’t going as well as she’d hoped, but she supposes that it’s better than the heavy silence that would’ve lingered instead, “shouldn’t you go home soon too? The sun’s going down fast now.”  
“I’m not going anywhere without you, Kanan, besides, I’m the only one here right now who has the keys to this place,” she says, exaggerating the words keys and jingling her bundle of keys in front of her in an undoubtedly Mari manner, “but yes, we should get going before the ride to Awashima stops running, can you walk?”

And stop running was exactly what it did. Without many options, the blue-haired girl phones her parents to tell them that she was staying at Dia’s for the night and the pair made their way to the Kurosawa estate. Dia was surprised when her two best friends showed up at her doorstep, and that’s when Mari and Kanan remembered that they didn’t inform the black-haired girl of their stay beforehand. Giving the two a short lecture on remembering to inform people if they’re going to crash their place, Dia invites the pair in.

“My parents are out on a business trip so it’s just Ruby and I here right now,” she informs her guests as she makes her way back to the kitchen, “make yourselves at home, you’re lucky that I haven’t started making dinner yet, I’ll make you two a portion as well.”

Kanan tenses at the word dinner.

Mari doesn’t fail to notice the way Kanan shifts in her seat the moment she hears the word dinner leave Dia’s lips and wraps an arm around the other girl, pulling her closer to her. Kanan rests her head against Mari’s shoulder, taking in her warmth and making up for her own lack of body heat. Drowsiness takes over Kanan and she closes her eyes, feeling safer and warmer than she had been in a long while.

“Kanan, it’s time to wake up,” a gentle voice cooed, and this time she knows that it’s Mari, “it’s dinner time.”.


	5. Dinner

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After dinner, it's time for bed

Sitting at the dinner table was exactly as uncomfortable as Kanan had imagined, and they’d only just sat down. Dia was handing out plates to each person at the table and Ruby was bringing drinks to the table. Mari and Kanan had offered to help but was turned down since they ‘were the guests’, staring at the plate of food in front of her now, her mind races with numbers associated with each item she recognized: white rice (130), Japanese curry with chicken (315), a salad (74) and a glass of orange juice (110), add a hundred just to be safe and this is going to cost her 730 calories, thank God she hadn’t eaten anything else today. Wait, this is 730 calories. Surely they wouldn’t notice if I leave some of the curry sauce. What if I get water instead of the juice. This is 730 calories. 730. Her head fills with the dread of having to eat this meal in front of the two people that are the most likely to make her eat and she can swear that her stomach has never dropped this far. In fact, she was so far lost in her own mind that she misses the moment everyone else said ‘thank you for the food’, which definitely did not help her case in avoiding attention as she could feel the other two older girls glancing over at her every once in a while as they began to eat. Ruby seemed to notice the heaviness in the air and fidgeted in her seat, her eyes locked onto her own plate.

“Ruby, you didn’t put your lunch box into the dishwasher today, can you go grab it now before we forget?” Dia asks and the pigtailed girl nods before leaving her chair and making her way to her room. Once Ruby was a comfortable distance away from the dining room, Dia started to speak again.  
“Kanan,” she begins, “I just want you to know that it’s fine if you don’t feel like you can finish the whole plate, I just want you to try and at least eat half of it.” Kanan just nods without lifting her head to meet the other girl's gaze. Soon Ruby returns to the room, putting her little pink lunchbox into the dishwasher before rejoining her upperclassmen and sister at the table. The meal goes by silently, and Kanan ends up clearing her plate and the juice as well, despite all of her inner protests, she was hungry and you can’t win against instinct when your brain is starved and hazy. At least Dia and Mari looked pleased with her ‘accomplishment’. 

They spend the rest of the evening working on the work that they missed while they were at the infirmary, with Kanan feeling both the most clear-headed and the absolute worst she had in weeks. Time passes quickly when you’re with friends, she’d been told, and she supposes that it’s true since before she even noticed it was 11 at night and Ruby lets out a yawn as she writes the last sentence for her English essay. Bidding the trio goodnight, she packs up her supplies and heads to bed for the night, prompting the older girls to do the same. Kanan, Dia and Mari are accustomed to spending nights over at each other’s houses and didn’t even need to speak to each other to know where to get futons and blankets at one another’s houses; Dia always kept the ones they used in the bottom left of her closet, Kanan had her’s in the utility closet and Mari simply invites them into an unused room in the hotel. Once the futons were laid out and the girls were dressed in borrowed pyjamas, each of them settled beneath their respective blankets. Kanan glances over at Mari next to her and wishes that she was under her blanket instead.

“So Kanan,” Dia starts, having clearly thought about what she was going to say before considering the lengthy period of silence beforehand, “I know that you’re not going to be happy with the topic that we’re going to be discussing, but Mari and I think that it has to be done.”  
“It’s my eating habits, isn’t it?”  
“I know we’ve said this before, but we’re worried about you,” Mari inserts herself into the conversation, “passing out two days in a row isn’t normal and I know you know that.”

Kanan doesn’t respond, she doesn’t know how to anyway, instead she just directs her eyes to the ceiling and waits for someone else to speak.

“I know it’s hard to open up about things like this, but we want to help you, and we can’t do that if you don’t tell us anything,” Mari continues, “and I’m pretty sure that you think you hide it well but Dia and I had noticed that something was off since the start of high school, we just, didn’t know what to do back then.”  
“Please Kanan, let us help you. We don’t want to see one of our best friends destroy herself, and as selfish as it sounds I want to see you healthy, so can you please at least do it for me?” Dia sounds like she is going to start tearing up, and Kanan feels guilt ripping at the inside of her chest for making the most level-headed member of Aqours cry but even still, the voice in her head dominates. 

_These are my best friends._ She tells herself. _If they don’t want the best for me then who will?_

As the voice in her head and her desperate desire to get better fought against each, Kanan had never felt so powerless in her life, caught between wanting to tell her friends everything and keeping it all in so she could keep going on starving. Too tired to keep her emotions in, Kanan soon found herself in tears. Mari was quick to pull the blunette into a hug and Dia quickly followed suit, leaving her warm bed to join the hug. Neither girls were quite sure of what to do with their dear friend sobbing in their embrace, but both were determined to make her feel better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I honestly have no clue anymore, what is staying in character?

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote another self-indulgent fic cause why not


End file.
